Emma Frost
Emma Frost is the former CEO of a lucrative electronics corporation, former White Queen of the Hellfire Club, former headmistress of Frost's Finishing School for Enlightened Minds in Massachusetts, and currently still one of the most powerful mutant psychics in the world. Background Born to a wealthy Boston family, Emma's early life was fraught with her father's impossibly cold, heartless demeanour and her mother's abuse of prescription drugs to keep her essentially non-existent in the doings of the home. Emotional support was non-existant; it was dog-eat-dog between she, her older sister Adrienne and her younger sister Cordelia. Twenty-plus of mind games played between the siblings and even their father all came to a head on the day when Winston Frost sat his children down to inform them that just one of them would be made heir to his fortune, rather than the right and responsibility being divided equally amongst them. Though Adrienne had up until that point carried herself as the perfect, flawlessly ruthless child(and was the eldest, to boot), she - and the rest of the Frost children - were shocked when rebellious middle child Emma was given the right of succession. This, of course, was yet /another/ game being enacted by Winston, and rather than simply accept it, she chose to forsake the family fortune for the sake of making her own way in the world. Not so long prior to this momentous meeting - a matter of months, perhaps a year - Emma began to hear voices that weren't there, perceive and understand people on far deeper levels than she ever thought possible--classic signs of psychic awakening, and without anything in the way of actual tutelage in their use, she still managed to bring them under control the point where they could be used to ease her school life by rooting out test answers as necessary and furthermore selling this information to other students. Really, if it /weren't/ for her powers, she might have considered just taking her father's money, but she knew from first hand experience the value of telepathic talents when it came to making one's way in the world. She was /also/ not above utilizing her name to take advantage of the societal connections that came with it; while this did not skyrocket her to the top of these elite circles, it gave her a foot in the door. This, she used to work her way into a position as one of the Hellfire Club's dancers, and despite her lack of any real talent and less than impressive looks, her telepathy went the distance in providing customers with a memorable experience. The right customers, combined with a little psychic nudging here and there meant that her stock literally and figuratively rose, the longer she worked at the Club; her paycheck, combined with generous gifts from appreciative customers meant her bank account's steady growth, and over time, she came to spend less and less time dancing in the club's general area and more with its most important members, and then finally, with no less than its Inner Circle. Once there, she made an impression on its members, owing to her sharp mind and the creative, cloying use of her powers. Being that nearly all of the Inner Circle was composed of mutants, after all, the ruse could not linger long, but its cleverness and implied potential meant that she moved from dancer to aide, and finally, to fully fledged member of the Inner Circle. Along with continuing to add to her own growing fortune(and using a goodly portion of these funds to help keep the Inner Circle financed), Emma's new position came with the responsibility to groom what would one day be the next generation of kings and queens of the world for the sake of the Club. Her powers gave her quite a leg up in both handling such young minds, as well as in acquiring a place for them to be trained. The prestigious Massachusetts Academy's board of trustees were coerced into giving her a position as chairwoman, and she wasted little time in transforming it into an institution of learning specifically for young mutants. As the headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy - redubbed the Frost Finishing School for Enlightened Minds - and White Queen of the Hellfire Club, Emma naturally came to blows with the X-men, as well as a number of other superheroes over the next several years. Similarly, her /students/ clashed with the younger class of Xavier's Academy as well as the Teen Titans on several occasions, and for Emma, at least, this was just a part of ensuring that they would be fully prepared to inherit the world, or at least be of more marginal use to the Hellfire Club. There was, however, rather a great drawback to all of this, though: during these costumed battles, and in the course of the other tasks that the Club at times demanded of Emma's students, they had a shocking tendency to come dangerously close to death to the point that even she, in what could best be described as a 'persisting substance-induced haze', grew to be concerned for their well-being. Gradually, Emma weaned herself from the various dependencies that years as one of the world's lawless, hedonistic elite naturally nurtured, and once she achieved the clarity of mind to do something about the disturbing trends witnessed amongst her students - that is, seeking to minimize the number of mortally dangerous missions undertaken by them - she quickly found herself facing a backlash from what she imagined to be her friends and colleagues. Which is to say that she had her title and rank stripped from her, and via Sebastian Shaw's connections with Sentinel manufacturing, her school and the area surrounding it was essentially flattened, killing her students. /She/, however, survived this assassination attempt due to the sudden manifestation of a new mutant power: a super-hard organic diamond form. Presently, without her school, without her responsibilities(such as they were) as the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, Emma is seeking a new place and purpose in the world. Personality Emma is pretty much a reforming supervillain, and while this clearly shows in her selfishness, her arrogance, her willingness to abuse her powers... she /also/ has a functioning system of morals that's mostly only developed and been nurtured relatively recently. Having spent several years as a teacher of young mutants, she's developed a taste for the job and an affection for dealing with such personalities. She does not show it in the best ways - she is still sharp of tongue, haughty, and so on even when dealing with students - but there is an undercurrent of genuine concern beneath her nastiness. The loss of her Massachusetts school, of her 'Hellions' did quite a lot to foster her ability to think even vaguely of doing anything for anyone other than herself and maybe her students. She is, then, a woman who's trying however vaguely to make up for years of being awful without /actually/ taking much responsibility for it; she will pretty much always blame substance abuse, her shoddy upbringing, the crowd she was with, and so on for her wrongs, regardless of how much merit those misdirections may actually have. In fact, even in reaching vaguely for absolution and reformation, Emma is /still/ a selfish and generally unpleasant person, but some of her negatives do wind up becoming positives when applied to playing a more heroic role. Her aforementioned willingness to abuse her powers, for instance, comes with a thin enough understanding of the concepts of privacy and responsibility that she is unlikely to inflict brain damage willy nilly; what she /will/ do, however, is disable those who are in need of it without hesitation, wipe memories to protect herself and those around her without a care, and so on. Far and away her best intentions revolve around mutant rights and safety, especially where adolescents are concerned. Her students were murdered by Sentinels, after all, and while she's pretty well aware of who was /behind/ them... the fact remains that mutant-hunting and killing robots were still involved, which is problematic in its own way. Logs * Guess Who? - Several months after a sudden explosive catastrophe wiped her school from the face of the Earth, former White Queen of the Hellfire Club Emma Frost shows up on the X-Mansion's doorstep in search of shelter. * Jackpot - Jenny Stavros decides to seek help in learning the fate of her lost, possibly dead mentor in an unlikely place, and winds up getting a touch more than she bargained for. * Tenure - After a couple of days spent acclimating herself to the X-Mansion, Emma Frost finally gets around to talking to Professor Xavier about a more permanent place among its staff. Category:Features Category:Taken Category:Characters Category:Hero